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With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. U.S. Representatives, including our own Dan Newhouse, have introduced the Food Donation Act of 2017, in an attempt, to make donations more likely.

Newhouse says it’s important because there are too many people in this country who are unsure of where their next meal is coming from, and so much of our food just going to waste …

DAN NEWHOUSE … “Whether it doesn’t make it from out of the field or from throughout our food delivery system at some point, about 40% of our food, overall, in this country gets wasted. And so this is an effort to update the Good Samaritan law that relates to food donations so people feel less liability in making donations of food available.”

Newhouse says a lot has changed since the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act was put in place back in 1966 …

DAN NEWHOUSE … “We didn’t have sell-by dates on products. We didn’t have things like that that would cause, today, people to think that food was unsafe. Those are put in place for a lot of different reasons. If a food product is assumed safe and is available on grocery store shelves, it should be able to be donated without fear of liability. So, what it will do is ask the Secretary of Agriculture to come up with rules and put into place to carry out the goals of making that happen.”

Newhouse says they’re just trying to lessen the worries and reduce some of the challenges to make it easier for people to donate and help address “food insecurity.”